Ben Affleck Will Direct American Adaptation Of Tell No One

When The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik took on the assignment last fall to adapt the French film Tell No One for an American audience, it seemed like a great fit, especially since Dominik had been taking his time picking his post-Jesse James project. But with Dominik's new film Cogan's Trade now shooting, it seems he has abandoned Tell No One entirely, leaving none other than Ben Affleck to pick things up where he left off. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. and Universal together have optioned the rights to the original Coben thriller, and Ben Affleck is attached to direct a script that Chris Terrio will adapt.

Deadline describes the American film as "basically a remake of the French film adaptation of Coben's book," though they don't seem to have optioned the rights to the French film, which was directed by Guillaume Canet. Affleck won't be getting to the project any time soon either-- he's putting together the cast for his next film Argo, a history-based film about the Iran hostage crisis that shoots this summer. Terrio also wrote the script for Argo, though, which means he and Affleck already work well together and will probably be anxious to reunite on Tell No One.

The story would return Affleck to the criminal plots he followed in both Gone Baby Gone and The Town. The main character is a pediatrician who is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife and later freed, until similar murders start happening years later.